A Punk Rock Grindhouse Horror, Spare Parts (2020)

A Punk Rock Grindhouse Horror, Spare Parts (2020)

A Punk Rock Grindhouse Horror, Spare Parts (2020)

What's more punk rock than getting your arm hacked off and replaced with a rivet-shooting axe by a cult of junkyard freaks?

Official Spare Parts (2020) Movie Poster - punk rock horror film about a female band versus a cult

On paper, Spare Parts should play like a scratched-up VHS discovered at a squat party — a bloody, DIY manifesto against good taste.

In practice, it's more like a band with all the right influences but no distinct sound. Ambitiously grimy, knowingly trashy, but leaving its best riffs on the cutting-room floor.

Short-Ass Summary

Directed by Andrew Thomas Hunt, this Canadian flick follows Ms. 45, an all-girl punk band touring through hell—or, at least, the worst parts of America.

After a setup ripped from a seventies revenge thriller, they're captured by a cult led by a wannabe Caesar (the great Julian Richings) and forced into gladiatorial games.

The ticket price? Their fucking limbs, swapped for crude weapons.

What Works & What Bleeds

This is grindhouse—low-budget, loud & messy. The junkyard-turned-neon-arena looks fantastic, dripping with sleazy charm. But the fights? Repetitive, underwhelming, rarely hitting the gonzo heights the premise promises.

The bandmates are clichés, the dialogue cartoonish. But in this genre, that's almost a feature. Where it stumbles is when it suddenly wants to be serious. Grindhouse can't fake gravitas — it just exposes the seams.

Body horror fans: temper expectations. The opening limb-removal sets a gnarly tone, but the film never keeps that energy. For a movie about weaponized arms, it oddly pulls its punches.

The Politics (or Lack Thereof)

This premise should be dirtbag-left gold: women literally commodified and dismembered by a patriarchal death cult.

That's a metaphor begging to be exploited. Instead, the movie half-flirts with critique before falling back into the same fetishization of women's suffering it could've skewered.

The revenge arc isn't a revolution — it's just a reshuffle inside the same broken system. That's the real missed opportunity.

The Comic Book Save

The tie-in comic? Way better. A cheap, little pulp artifact that delivers the raw, pulpy blast the film reaches for but rarely lands.

Honestly, it's what got me to watch the movie, and I wish it had been a full series.

Verdict

Spare Parts is exactly what it is: a 90-minute B-movie that respects your time, delivers on the hook, but never escapes predictability.

It's dumb fun with flashes of brilliance, but too cautious to hit cult-classic status.

Rating: 2.5/5 — it's halfway to greatness, but settles for "just fine."

#SpareParts #MovieReview #Horror #Grindhouse #PunkRock #JulianRichings

Comments

  1. Comrade KASSeptember 27, 2025 at 1:10 AM

    Thank you for reading , if you enjoyed it please share .

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